KEY POINTS:
Auckland's civic planners do not often get things right, and on the rare occasions that they do, they have a dismaying tendency to revisit the plan and ruin it. Right now they are contemplating an alteration to the Viaduct Harbour that would drastically reduce its appeal.
They propose to turn the front of the area into a bus route, having buses run more or less constantly from Quay St along the harbour frontage to cross a lifting bridge at the yacht entrance and enter the waterfront development planned between Halsey St and the Tank Farm.
The development, to be known as Wynyard Quarter, is an attractive one and probably needs a direct connection to the Viaduct. A design competition for the lifting bridge has produced a striking, if fearfully expensive, concept of tall, elegant, sail-shaped structures that could grace the waterfront and be emblematic for the city.
But does the connection need to be for any sort of motor traffic, especially buses? It takes little imagination to see how that would alter the Viaduct. The present aspect of the area would be lost. In place of the front promenade, semi-open to the sea, there would be a vehicle thoroughfare, destroying the outlook from the dockside restaurants and bars, and the wide, pleasant public places where people walk, talk, meet and linger.
The planners envisage buses running along the harbour front so frequently that the bridge at the entrance would need to be down almost all the time, making it very hard to justify $50 million for a design that appeals only when upright. If an almost permanent crossing is required it would be more logical to crank up the old bridge, which is still in its place, at times when boats need to enter. But, what a pity that would be.
Why, when city council planners have got the Viaduct so right, would they put it so wrong? Their Wynyard Quarter could be served quite adequately by a footbridge from the Viaduct and public transport from Fanshawe St.
The council's transport consultants argue that Fanshawe St is busy and that the waterfront bridge would allow bus services to "penetrate right through the Quarter". But the Quarter is only a few blocks wide in any direction. Residents farthest from the Viaduct could reach its attractions in just a few minutes by bus via Fanshawe St. And visitors to the Viaduct who wanted to go on to the Quarter's waterfront would probably prefer to walk across a connecting bridge than board a bus for such a short distance.
The consultants think it desirable to get buses "right to the front door" of the Wynyard developments. But why, if they can come to the "back door", as it were, from Fanshawe St? They hold front-door access to be consistent with "transit oriented development", which sounds like one of those faddish, self-justifying principles that can be taken too far.
They want to run 18 buses an hour in each direction at peak times and 12 an hour each way at other times. That is an average of every three-to-five minute intervals. It would turn the Viaduct into a bus stop, maybe even a terminal.
Their report says one of the benefits to the bus network would be to reduce pressure on "layover space" in the vicinity of Britomart. They even see a route along the waterfront as relief for Fanshawe St, which does not need it.
It is hard to escape the impression they are promoting a cause rather than a need. Auckland's most exciting harbourside developments, recent and future, could be ruined simply for the promotion of public transport. It would be a crazy, obsessive act of civic vandalism. It must not happen.
